


Twilight and Dust

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-17
Updated: 2007-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:29:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seemed wrong driving alone without Sammy making happy nonsense noises in the baby seat in the back, without Dean beside him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twilight and Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Timeframe: preseries, two time periods  
> 
> 
> a/n: Written for [](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/profile)[**smilla02**](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/) 's birthday. I used [this image](http://www.mo.gov/mo/mophotos/rural/RU_OldHouseHwy24_cox_051905.jpg) and [this one](http://imezgon.tripod.com/images/Haunted%20House.jpg) for inspiration. Much thanks to [](http://embroiderama.livejournal.com/profile)[**embroiderama**](http://embroiderama.livejournal.com/) for her great beta reading skills.

Seemed wrong driving alone without Sammy making happy nonsense noises in the baby seat in the back, without Dean beside him in the front with his legs too short for his feet to reach the floor, his back ramrod straight, a small sentry on duty.

With half an hour to sunset, he checked the map Jim had drawn for him. It was Jim who had first taught him how to consecrate the ironshot, how to pack it into a shotgun shell, how to contain the ghost if you couldn't find the grave yet.

He turned off the blacktop onto a dirt road that bumped and twisted through the fields, around the curve of a hill where the bare branches of a tree reached for the burning red sky. John stopped the car, leaving it pulled to the side of the dirt road, as if anyone else would be along that evening. From the looks of the hard-packed and weed-choked dirt, no one had been through in months; it hadn't rained much in the area either. Putting his boots down on the dirt and sliding out of the Impala was like going out of a shelter into a storm. The wind tasted of autumn, stinging with dust, and he smelled the dryness of it mixed with exhaust as he moved around to the trunk and got out the shotgun and his rucksack.

The dry, brittle yellow grasses of the fields snapped under his boots as he walked, shotgun slung over one shoulder, the extra ammo, the flashlight, and the holy water in the old green rucksack slung over the other. He moved easily despite the high, resistant grass and the bumpy ground; the morning routine of stretching, running, push-ups, and sit-ups was paying off. Dean liked to get down on the floor of whatever cheap motel they were staying in that week, imitating him while he worked out. John encouraged it but he kept the guns out of sight in duffel bags whenever he could. His oldest boy already knew about things like holy water and salt, though, and he'd probably pick up additional lore staying with Pastor Jim.

He reached the top of a rise and stopped, hearing his own breath in his ears mingling with the rustle of wind through the grass, and looked up at the house. The red brick looked anemic in the twilight and the final burning of the sun going down behind him stretched his shadow towards it -- as if the house was reaching out to him, not the other way around. It was two stories tall, the roof of the front porch half-collapsed. The trunk of a dead tree sprawled across the ground in front of it, and the other tree looked about ready to give up and join it.

~*~*~

Nine years old, or is he ten, it's summer, and he's at Aunt Maggie's farm out past Wichita for a few weeks. Each day is sweat and cold glasses of iced tea, Aunt Maggie shooing him out of her kitchen so she can work, and him climbing over things and falling into things and crawling through things. He's got a skinned knee and a bruise on his elbow from his adventures so far.

It's his third day there when he finds the house tucked almost shyly past the green bushiness of a tree. The place is sagging to one side, about to fall down, the shutters dark red like blood against the dirty white walls and he can't resist going to it, grubby fingers tugging at the rusty door knob. He's pretty sure he'll get into trouble and Uncle Bill will confine him to the yard for a day or two and maybe even tell his parents.

John hesitates because he hates it when his father's angry with him. It's not that he yells, it's that he gets all quiet, with short, clipped annoyed words, and they don't talk about it for a week while John knows he's disappointed him.

But the house is too much to resist. He pulls the door open.

~*~*~

When the twilight faded, he walked up to the front porch, the wooden steps sagging under his weight, and pulled the front door open. But he might as well have torn it off as opened it; the door was about off its hinges anyway. John stepped inside as the door teetered in the wind behind him.

Darkness enclosed him like a blanket, and he switched on the flashlight, the beam snagging the jagged holes in the deteriorated walls. The first floor stretched out generously, two rooms on either side of him. Dead center, the staircase went up into darkness, a few steps missing, but he had no need to go upstairs, not yet. The place smelled of animal feces, dust, rot, and the tall grass, as if the house had become a part of the fields surrounding it.

He turned, going into the big room to the south of the staircase, and dropped the rucksack on the floor. Keeping the shotgun in his grasp, he knelt, set down the flashlight, and took the box of rock salt out of the bag. John walked the perimeter of the room, pouring the white salt into a line at the base of the walls. The flashlight beam spilled a long, thin slice of light across the floor where he'd left it to guide him back to his bag. It picked out dust, debris, and something that looked like the carcass of a rat. He skipped the doorway, leaving it free of salt, then finished the room and went back to his light and rucksack.

John flicked off the flashlight, put it away in the bag, and waited, the bag and box of salt at his feet, gun heavy in his hands. Waited while the glimpses of night through the cracked, dirty windows grew deeper and stars appeared over the dark line of the distant trees, while he got used to the smell of the place and knew that when he got back to Jim's, Dean would wrinkle up his nose at the traces of it he smelled on his father but not complain.

At last, the cold arrived, sharp as needles of ice.

~*~*~

The overgrown bushes crawling up the outside and the brown, murky dust that streak the windows swallow the sunlight within. It takes him a moment for his eyes to adjust and make out the tattered walls. He stops and gapes at the stairs, which start up okay but then are gone, a jagged tear halfway up, so the second floor landing seems to hang suspended by magic. Anxious wings flap above him. He wanders deeper in, thoughts of secret passageways and lost treasure following him, into a large room, his canvas All-Stars (once white, now a comfortable, dirty gray) crunching on the gritty floor, and he hardly breathes, feeling reverent at the half-lit gloom, like he does in church.

Something brushes against him and the hairs go up on his bare arms, just like that. Then the cold comes, settling over him, squeezing his chest. His breath rises in clouds and that's the only way he knows he's still breathing.

A hollow, furious whisper echoes in his ear, a quick, dark syllable, and he can't make out the words.

~*~*~

Even under the layers of undershirt, flannel, and leather jacket, he felt his skin go chill, the heat withdrawing from his face and fingertips. The form took shape ahead of him, outlined against the dark, murky glass.

John cocked the shotgun and fired. The ghost dispersed. With one swift motion he snagged the rucksack strap over his wrist, grabbed the box of salt, and was through the door, into the hall. Turning, he poured salt across the line of the door, finishing the rectangle.

The ghost reappeared, a lanky figure in a hat and bloody shirt, advanced towards him, and reeled back from the salt line. He'd contained it. Now he'd have time to check the house, gather clues as to who was haunting it, and exhume from town records a date of death and burial location from handwritten pages so old the corners crumbled if he touched them. Digging up the body was the real labor. Plus there was always the danger of getting caught and thrown in a holding cell while his boys wondered why he hadn't come back to them when he'd promised.

~*~*~

His muscles unfreeze and he's running, pounding towards the door, then through it, leaping down the steps out into the sunlight, stumbling over the tangled green undergrowth. The punch of adrenaline is so strong he's lightheaded by the time he stops, bending over, hands on his knees, sucking in gasping breaths.

John walks fast, hands curling into fists because they're trembling so hard.

He pauses, palm held up to shield his face against the sun, to look back once.

~*~*~

John finished, found what he was looking for in about an hour, a bundle of letters under a loose floorboard upstairs. A step nearly collapsed beneath him as he put his boot down and he lifted his leg hastily.

Outside, he breathed deep in the dusty, sharp air of the autumn night, looking up at the bare branches of the tree jutting towards the stars. Then he walked slow across the fields, his grasp steady on the shotgun, the rucksack's weight easy against him.

He didn't look back.

~end  



End file.
